Never mind stitches—it is possible to solder wounds closed
IF YOU CUT yourself, your options are to reach for a plaster or, if the cut is nasty, to go to a doctor to have it stitched or…
Experiments contradicting the Standard Model are piling up
Some bosons, quarks and muons appear not to be behaving as predictedTHE STANDARD MODEL of particle physics—completed in 1973—is…
Spacesuits are showing their age
FIXING PANELS on the International Space Station (ISS) is a bit like doing car repairs while wearing stiff oven gloves and standing…
Genetic screening can improve drug prescribing
Most people carry at least one mutation that can stop a drug working properlyPETER LEY, a retired civil servant who lives in London,…
How balls of blackworms avoid the knotty step
Thousands of them can disperse in thousandths of a secondMANY ANIMALS find safety in herds, colonies, schools or swarms. But few…
Why 15,000-year-old art might have been displayed in firelight
THE BRITISH MUSEUM has in its care more than 8m artefacts. Visitors can see a mere 80,000 of them or so on display at any one…
A sound way towards reversible vasectomies
Researchers test a means to block—and neatly unblock—men’s reproductive ductworkTHE MOST reliable means of contraception…
America is ending anti-satellite missile tests
“SIMPLY PUT, these tests are dangerous, and we will not conduct them.” So said Kamala Harris, America’s vice-president,…
Songbirds get more colourful the closer they live to the equator
A 19th-century hypothesis confirmed at lastWHEN THE Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt arrived in South America in 1799,…